this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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The recent climate scares shook me up, I'm embracing whatever we can do to reduce our impact. A lot of it is small, but it's voting with the wallet.
Thing is, the whole economic system relies on a steady stream of "buy a replacement". If you make something that lasts forever, the maximum number of sales you can make is around 8 billion (usually less). So stuff needs to wear out and break. I'm sure as heck going to challenge it regardless.
And honestly a recent sustainable purchase was a toothbrush by Suri (my old brush broke. It's still greener to use what you already have if it works). As a very sleek, quiet, well designed product that feels of a high build quality it's debunked the thought of sustainable meaning "same thing but with sacrifices". It proved to me that some sustainable stuff can actually be better.
Back in school we were taught that products have lifetimes in which they are popular and once those run out you have to get a new one on the market if you want to keep growing.
I try to remain optimistic but if your product never breaks and is never "out of date" then the market will be saturated at some point.
There was this company in Germany that sold the "Römertopf" which was basically a ceramic baking utensil that never broke if treated right. They went out of business because pretty much everyone that wanted one already had one.
I hope someone smarter than me can carve a business out of producing robust and sustainable electronics and the like, because if no one is successful with it the big companies will never follow suit.
Yeah that's the worry I was alluding to in my second paragraph and I don't know what the answer is. Probably that it's a fundamental problem with capitalism.
It looks like you can still buy Römertopf stuff online, so I suspect they're still in business. At the end of the day they're ceramic, they will be broken so there will always be some demand for them.
But your point stands. There is a serious danger for a company to make a product that lasts forever so that they'll never get repeat business.
I think a company could theoretically get around this problem by growing slowly (or not at all). That way, they can keep making some money to keep the tooling and the knowledge around go keep manufacturing going at a low level. They can produce replacement parts and replacement products and still keep the business afloat. Nothing is indestructible. There's still a bustling cast iron skillet market, after all.
Of course, the problem with that is infinite growth is what fat cats want, not slow sustainable growth.
But what do I know? I'm a moron on the internet.